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Saturday, July 28, 2007
day 28 - barn rafters
This is the view from a storage room in the loft of the barn on the ranch where I spent most of my childhood, one way or another. My grandfather and his father built the barn in the very early 50's with their four hands and a Ford tractor. It was constructed to house a commercial egg ranch operation, which it did for a decade and a half or so, before my grandfather's heart condition required him to "slow down" (this was the advice they gave you in the 60's, none of this new-fangled 'go out and get some exercise' stuff), so he sold off the chickens and took up teaching school.
Anyway. This barn, aside from being a veritable breeding ground for the Hanta virus and possibly a rather unsound structure (see above re: built in 1950 with four hands and a Ford tractor; did I mention that they mixed the concrete foundation themselves with sand dredged from the creek, sand which you could scrape off of the bottoms of the walls with your bare hand even when I was a kid twenty years ago?), was one of the preferred play areas for my dozen maternal cousins and myself when we were children. This storage room was our playroom -- mice-infested mattresses and all -- and many was the hour we spent there, inhaling all manner of dust and organisms while playing House or War or whatever else popped into our heads. (It is my theory that these many hours of hanging out in such an unsanitary environment are the reason why my immune system is so robust today. Maybe I should open a spa there.) When I was a little older and I lived at the ranch, it was sometimes one of my jobs to come down and feed the (drastically reduced flock of) chickens and gather their eggs in the morning and evening; in the winter this meant it was dark, and even at the ripe, mature ages of eleven and twelve, tough country girl that I am and all, I had a phobia about the barn in the dark. So many shadows. So many creaky, unidentifiable sounds. The moment when I had to reach my arm in through the door and throw the massive switch that turned on all the lights in the place was sheer terror. One time my brother was with me -- here's the part that ties in with this picture -- and he wickedly whispered that I had better check the rafters before I went in, in such fear-instilling tones as only a big brother can master.
Confession: I'm thirty-two years old and, thanks to my darling big brother's words so many years ago, I still get a shiver if I have to be in the barn after dark, especially when the light from the flashlight bobs around these rafters from the feed room below.
Photographically speaking, this is far from perfect, and it's not square, but oh well. Maybe I'll reshoot it someday. If I can bring myself to go in the barn again after reliving all this, that is.
Comments
I've finally got it - a new blog. Hope you can pop over some time!
love, Valerie
Posted by: Valerie at July 31, 2007 05:54 AM
